


the loop of harley things

by novoaa1



Category: DCU
Genre: BAMF Harleen Quinzel, Bisexual Harleen Quinzel, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Harleen "I have a PhD motherfucker" Quinzel, Hugs, Mentioned Bruce Wayne, Mentioned Joker (DCU), POV Harleen Quinzel, Pamela Isley Loves Harleen Quinzel, Past Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Protective Harleen Quinzel, Psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, Soft Harleen Quinzel, Soft Pamela Isley, Threats of Violence, Violence, but just some aspects of it and placed it in a different setting, i stole a scene from harley quinn: the animated series because it's mcfreaking hilarious, well i didn't steal the whole scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: “Okay,” Harley mumbles, leaning to sit back on her haunches. She wrings her hands nervously in her lap. “Maybe I paid him a little visit.”“The man I explicitly told you not to assail?”Harley snaps her head up at that, some of her earlier indignation returning. “I only broke the one bone!” she protests shrilly. “Wait, actually, no, it wasn’t even a break! Ifracturedit!”Ivy tilts her head to one side, quietly assessing Harley with a shrewd gaze. “You’re not at all helping your case, Peanut.”Or: Harley runs a couple errands, and gets herself in a smidge of trouble.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 143





	the loop of harley things

**Author's Note:**

> hey kids
> 
> first off, READ THE TAGS 'cause there's violence in here that i don't personally think is all that graphic, but everything's relative, yea? and i don't want to trigger anyone 
> 
> second, wrote this cause i thought it might help with my current writer's block situation
> 
> i've got half of the next chapter for 'green' written out but as of yet no idea what the next scene will be, and i'd like each chapter for that to be 2,500 words (if not more) so we shall see
> 
> n e ways thought of this really randomly and wanted to run with it
> 
> also i'm surprised there isn't more harlivy stuff on this site? like there's a fair amount obviously but still. i'm always looking to add to it 'cause lowkey reading works on ao3 saved my LIFE a few years back
> 
> proofreading is still for whiners (read: it's for smart people but i have like 2 brain cells) so please let me know if you find any mistakes so i can fix them!

Harley bounds down the gloomy streets of metropolitan Gotham in energetic skips, humming a tune to herself she can’t quite place and smiling brightly at everyone she passes (even if most of them don’t hesitate to return it with a scowl).

The weather is overcast (again), and her left knee is starting to ache (old gymnastics injury), but Harley doesn’t mind. As far as she’s concerned, it’s a good day. 

She had Fruit Loops for breakfast, the sun is out and shining (even if it’s currently doing so from behind rain clouds), and she’s got the prettiest lady in the whole wide freakin’ world waiting for her back at a little run-down apartment they call home.

First, though—business. Then pleasure. 

_Pleasure_. She smirks, a girlish giggle bubbling out of her that earns her a strange look from the homeless guy posted up curbside against a vacant news stand as she passes by. 

_Focus, Harley_.

“Hey lady—shut the fuck up,” grumbles a voice from the alley to her right. 

_Shit_ , she thinks. _Did I say that out loud?_

She chances a brief glance over (though she doesn’t break her stride) to see who’d spoken—some drunken man sat on his ass, slumping heavily against the weathered brick wall behind him.

She doesn’t bother coming up with a response—she’s on a mission, after all—and by the time she’s onto the next block, she’s forgotten the interaction entirely.

She tilts her head and squints at the street signs overhead as she approaches an intersection—Falcone and Bleaker. 

“A-ha!” she exclaims to no one in particular, feeling a sense of pride well in her chest. “Almost there.”

— — 

“AUUUGHHH!!!!!” The lowlife two-timing wannabe gangster without a name shrieks in pain as the business end of her bat catches him square in the _aguacatas_. He sways unsteadily on his feet, clutching his groin and hissing out slurred obscenities (—none of which are particularly inventive, unfortunately). 

Naturally, Harley takes that fortuitous opening for what it is: an opportunity to wind up once more and deliver another swing, this time just beneath his left kneecap. _Crack!_ goes the tibia (likely a greenstick fracture, nothing too crazy), and he crumples to the floor, still vehemently howling bloody murder all the while.

“Look—” she begins, only to be interrupted by yet another blood-curdling scream. 

“ **FUUUUUUUUCU—AUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHH—** ”

“Are ya gonna shut the fuck up so I can talk?”

“ **YOU B-B- _BITCH_ , IT _HURTS_ —**”

“Just give it a minute,” she dismisses with an indifferent wave of one hand, the other lazily balancing the blood-speckled bat on her shoulder. “You’ll go into shock.”

As if on cue, the man’s elbows (which had previously been propping him up) give out. He ends up flat on his back atop the cement, one leg bent at an awkward angle and trapped beneath the other.

“There it is,” Harley observes smugly. She comes to stand imposingly over him, straddling his torso such that her ratty sneakers nudge his bony hips through the cheap knockoff Kingsman suit he probably thrifted off eBay. She slides her bat off her shoulder, then gives it a little twirl before angling it straight down, the end of the barrel pressing unrelentingly into his larynx. “Let’s make this quick, huh? Blink if ya can understand me.”

The man’s throat contracts visibly as he gasps and heaves for air, his pale skin beaded with sweat. (It soaks through his short-cropped golden hair, matting the darkened strands to his scalp.) His eyelids flutter, but he doesn’t blink. 

Harley sighs. She presses down on his jugular with the bat until he squawks—a choked, tortured sound that might’ve disturbed her before the acid, but now only makes a deranged cackle of glee bubble up unbidden in her throat. “C’mon, Mistah, I ain’t got all day.”

The man wheezes out a shaky exhale. A second later, he manages a questionable blink. 

Whatever. Good enough for her. “Good. Ya know why I’m here? Blink again if the answer is ‘Yes.’”

No blink. Not even a flutter of the lids. His pupils are blown, Harley notes absentmindedly. (Classic sign of shock.) She almost can’t see a single trace of brown. 

Still, he’s breathing and somewhat lucid, so she takes that as her answer. 

“Well, at least this’ll be a lesson to ya—provided ya get some medical help once we’re done here—that ya don’t fuck around with my girl Ivy and her tree-huggin’ plans unless yer lookin’ to get some kinda retribution.” She presses down a little harder on the bat, snorting as it makes him whimper and squirm. “Ya pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, blondie? Blink so I know ya get me.”

A shaky blink. 

“Cool!” She pulls back the bat, twirls it with a flick of the wrist before letting it land comfortably atop her shoulder. His blown pupils reflect sheer horror as she steps back over his torso, then comes ‘round to loom imperiously over his face with a wicked smirk. “Ya try her shit again, and I’ll leave ya with two broken limbs instead’a one. Capisce?”

Another shaky blink.

“You’re a peach,” Harley coos, not even bothering to curb the mocking tenor in her voice. 

With that, she turns on her heel and starts skipping off towards the exit, the sounds of the man’s ragged breathing fading with every step. 

— —

**[2 DAYS LATER]**

“Harley dear?” Ivy’s voice filters over from the entryway to the living room, where Harley’s sprawled out on the floor in front of the TV coloring a picture of Batman.

“Hmm?” Harley hums. She doesn’t look up from the page as she colors in Batsy’s cape with hot pink crayon; she _really_ wants to do him justice. (Hah. Justice. Batsy. Get it?)

Ivy strides over gracefully then plops herself down right in front of the TV facing Harley, criss-cross applesauce style. “I heard that that up-and-coming mobster—the one who was hell-bent on giving me so much trouble—landed himself in the hospital just a couple days ago.”

Harley freezes for a split second, her crayon going still in her hand. “Uhh, yeah, I think I remember ya mentionin’ something about that guy.” She forces herself to keep going a beat later, shading in the last quarter of Batsy’s pretty pink cape and humming a jaunty tune under her breath like nothing’s awry—but she knows better than to think Ivy didn’t notice. Ivy _always_ notices. “Sucks about him bein’ hurt and all, though.”

“Harley.” Ivy’s voice is gentle, measured; but, it’s a chastisement all the same, and Harley has to fight the urge to wince. “Look at me.”

Sighing quietly, Harley does. 

“I told you to let me handle it,” Ivy says after a moment’s pause, a defeated look in her pretty green eyes that doesn’t at all match the fond smile subtly curving her lips. “Didn’t I?”

“But I didn’t _do_ nothin’—!”

“Harley,” Ivy admonishes, this time with a heckuva lot more _oomph_. “Don’t lie to me.”

Harley feels a shiver run down her spine. ( _Christ_ , but she loves it when Ivy gets all assertive and stern.) “.... Okay,” she grumbles, dropping her crayon and pushing her lips out into an irritable pout. 

Ivy arches a single brow. “‘Okay’ what?”

She’s like stone, watching unblinkingly as Harley pushes herself up off the ground with a quiet huff, then crawls over on all fours until they’re close enough to touch.

“ _Okay_ ,” Harley mumbles, leaning to sit back on her haunches. She wrings her hands nervously in her lap. “Maybe I paid him a little visit.”

“The man I explicitly told you not to assail?”

Harley snaps her head up at that, some of her earlier indignation returning. “I only broke the one bone!” she protests shrilly. “Wait, actually, no, it wasn’t even a break! I _fractured_ it!”

Ivy tilts her head to one side, quietly assessing Harley with a shrewd gaze. “You’re not at all helping your case, Peanut.”

“He was a _dick_!” Harley blurts, hands flailing out to either side in a desperate attempt to further illustrate her point. “He kept fuckin’ with yer plans to make Gotham a better, greener place! _Also_ , he said mean things about ya! Motherfucker’s lucky I stopped at just _one_ break—no, _fracture_. I’m basically Mother Teresa!”

Ivy’s quiet for a long moment, a sorta pensive look upon her features that has Harley squirming in place, nerves twisting painfully in her gut. 

(It’s unfamiliar, this feeling. There’s no one else—sans Ivy, of course—who could ever evoke this kind of earnestness, this sense of genuine contrition within her. Even with Mistah J, it was all fear—raw and bone-chilling. No sincerity, no accountability, no _love_. With Ivy, it’s different. _She’s_ different.) 

It seems like forever until Ivy finally speaks, but when she does, it’s quiet. Sentimental in such a way that’s so rare where she’s concerned, even if still tinged with the faintest hint of exasperation:

“I love you, Daffodil,” she murmurs, and Harley feels like singing. 

Instead, she propels herself forward off her knees with a squeal, bounding up and into Ivy’s lap like an overly-excited puppy desperate for cuddles. 

“Oof!” Ivy’s arms come to wrap around her like she’s home, rubbing the bare skin between her shoulder blades with one hand and securing a solid hold around Harley’s hips with the other. 

Harley purrs, nuzzling her face affectionately into the crook of Ivy’s neck and placing a million little kisses along her warm chlorophyll-green skin. 

“So, ya ain’t mad at me?”

Ivy chuckles, and Harley giggles as the vibrations tickle her nose. 

“Of course not, Harls,” she says gently. “Though for future reference, I’d much prefer you kept me in the loop.”

Harley smirks against her skin. “The loop of Harley things?”

Ivy shivers at the sensation of Harley’s words against her throat. “Yes, darling, exactly—the loop of Harley things.” Her grip tightens around Harley as if trying to pull her impossibly closer, and Harley melts into it like it’s safe (because she damn well knows it is). “Deal?”

Harley nods shallowly, then ducks her head to place a feather-light kiss along the elegant slope of Ivy’s collarbone. “Deal.”

— —

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts? comments? concerns?🧐
> 
> (here's my [tumblr](https://psyches.co.vu/) which i'm on a lot more often if you wanna come yell at me there!)


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